Don't fall behind with a non-optimized mobile site

According to a study performed earlier this year by Google, 79 percent of retailers that advertise on its site haven't optimized their own pages for mobile.This isn't promising news for non-optimized sites, as Mobile Marketer reports that 78 percent of consumers prefer a mobile-ready web page over a mobile app.

Following a separate study, Dai Pham of Google's mobile ads marketing team said there were "strong implications" for businesses and mobile advertisers.

"Make sure you can be found via mobile search as consumers regularly use their phones to find and act on information," he said.

Additional findings from the studies included the fact that 88 percent of those who perform a local search on their smartphones take action with one day, and nine out of 10 smartphone searches result in an action such as making a purchase, visiting a business or a click-to-call.

Google also recently launched a mobile initiative at howtogomo.com that tests how optimized a company's mobile website is, along with tips on how to improve it.

Hubspot's Blog reiterated the growing popularity of mobile in a recent post, stating that "Despite some predictions that mobile SEO will be of negligible importance, mobile search has grown (by five times) in the past five years - far outpacing PC searches - and the growth is only set to continue with the rapid uptick in smartphone sales," wrote guest poster Lior Levin.

Levin proceeded to provide tips for companies looking to successfully transfer their sites to the mobile arena.

For example, owners should research keywords their customers typically use on mobile searches, as they often differ from those used on a desktop. This can be determined via advanced options on a Google AdWords account.

Furthermore, a mobile website should be optimized for predictive text, which mobile visitors are likely to be far more dependant upon. This can be accomplished by structuring keywords in ways that anticipate common predictive phrases.

Lastly, optimized sites should avoid any clutter that interferes with viewability, such as the use of Flash or large images that take a long time to load. The best mobile sites are structured in HTML with reasonably-sized images and shortened ALT tags to ensure a neat display.

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